Digital News Report – A report released Tuesday by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found almost half of all US illegal immigrants are people who entered the country legally and then stayed past their visa expiration date. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have limited ability in tracking these expired visas. The report estimates around 40 to 45 percent of illegal immigrants are people who stay in the country after the visa expired.
According to Pew Hispanic Center, there are around 12 million illegal immigrants living in the US. Out of these, there are around 4 to 5.5 million people that are illegal immigrants who entered the US legally and then stayed in the country after their visa expired.
Currently, there is a backlog of 1.6 million people that the government officials have flagged for investigating for living illegally with expired visas in the US. The agencies that investigates these cases are not able to keep up with the volume. The flagged records of people staying past their visa dates are given to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to investigate. According to the report, the ICE government agency only spends 3 percent of its man hours to investigate immigrants with expired visas.
The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn said, “The reality is that U.S. VISIT remains a very troubled and ineffective program.” He added that the US needs to have an exit system to identify people living in the country with expired visas in real time.
By Victoria Brown